Quigley could help solve riddle

If there’s one guy who could make the Jon Cornish Question easier to solve, it’s Kansas University freshman Angus Quigley.

While KU’s football coaches go back and forth on how to spread out Cornish’s talents, the men below Cornish on the depth chart could be key.

At running back, it’s Quigley.

“Jon is going to be the starter,” Quigley said. “Jon deserves to be the starter. He’s good.

“I’m sitting back, watching, learning, taking my reps as they come.”

Quigley, a signing-day surprise a year ago after nearly going to TCU (“It was a joke,” he said of his TCU recruitment), has moved into KU’s two-deep at a crucial position.

Quigley still might be a work in progress. But he likely will get some snaps this fall – especially with Cornish’s ability on several special teams.

“You can see he’s athletic,” KU coach Mark Mangino said of Quigley. “He’s quick, he’s strong, he’s not an easy guy to bring down. But he’s got to get his pad level down a little bit so he doesn’t take so many hits.”

That’s the one setback to Quigley’s game. The Texas native, with the football in his hands, resembles former Colorado star Chris Brown, now with the NFL’s Tennessee Titans. That’s good and bad. Brown was a powerful back at CU who ran for 309 yards in a 2002 game against Kansas. But the upright running style can expose Quigley to some real shots, and pretty soon, Quigley’s body could stop cooperating.

“In two-a-days (last August), I came in, and I was running so high,” Quigley said. “Every day was tough. Now, I’m not beating up my shoulders as much. The lower I get, I figured out, the less hard blows I take.”

While working on drills to get his shoulders down, Quigley also has beefed up considerably in the weight room under the direction of strength coach Chris Dawson. He said he arrived at KU weighing 194 pounds. Now, he says he’s up to 215, and his speed wasn’t sacrificed.

“It didn’t change, because we run so much. We speed train,” Quigley said. “It’s not like you put (the weight) on and just sit around with it.”

At least he doesn’t hope so. The 6-foot-2 Quigley did enough of that last year during a red-shirt season, watching as the Jayhawks rolled to a Fort Worth Bowl victory not far from his hometown of Cleburne, Texas.

“It was tough coming from high school, playing all the sports, being the star, and getting here and red-shirting,” Quigley said. “It was tough, but I got through that.”

And now, he wants to be a factor. And, perhaps, part of the answer.